


Pandora's throat

by DreamsofRomance



Category: Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27182341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsofRomance/pseuds/DreamsofRomance
Summary: Lex and Tim have been through a lot, and adult life is never easy.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: New Year's Resolutions 2020





	Pandora's throat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [samalander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/gifts).



> I hope you'll enjoy this very late (or maybe early?) Yuletide surprise :-)

She leans forward, hands on either side of the washbasin, head bent. She can’t quite cope looking up and facing her own reflection, not just just yet. The morning – or midday, to be more accurate — light filtering in through the bathroom window, that perfect, mild, uniform artist’s glow which was the main reason she decided to rent the loft in the first place, feels harsh and painful to her eyes. 

‘Fuck!’ 

The word comes out in a blast of air, bundling both her frustration and exasperation alike. With a sigh she pushes herself up on her hands. In the mirror, a puffy, bleary version of herself stares back. There are red blotches all over her cheeks, and the rest of her skin looks yellow and sickly.

Jesus.

She opens the tap with a quick, angry movement and splashes her face. 

_Why did I have to break up with Patrick last night of all nights?_

Right on the eve of the Big One. The night before the opening of her most important exhibit to date. The press is going to have a field day. Another lover to add to her long string of failed relationships. They are supposed to come and report about her artwork, but it’s the heiress’ love life they will focus on, of course.

‘Lex, where is Patrick this evening?’ ‘Miss Murphy, is it true you and Mr. Benton are no longer an item?’ ‘Lex, does it have to do with the _dinosaurs?’_

The dinosaurs.

No matter what’s going on in her life, that’s always the only question everybody really wants to know the answer to. 

With a sigh, she grabs a cigarette from the crumpled package on the side of the washbasin and lights up. She exhales at her reflection, the smoke wafting over the mirror pane. She’s getting skinny, her arms and shoulders look sinewy. Cynicism has made her angular. She scoffs. The girl that cared about eating healthy - that cared, full stop - is a long way in the past. She'll put anything inside of her these days. Well, not _anything,_ she supposes, she's still a vegetarian; cranked it up a notch to vegan, even. The idea of causing another innocent being to suffer has become even more impossible to her than it ever was before. And yet, there is a predatorial streak to her, too. She rakes her fingers through her hair, forgets for the millionth time it’s cropped too short to be tucked behind her ears anymore. She likes the style; the boyish nature of it, the white, unforgiving dye-job. It gives a hard edge to her appearance that she finds pleasing.

Patrick, not so much. 

‘You’re incapable of love, Lex!’ he’d shouted at her, last night, upper lip shaking and on the verge of tears. ‘You’re a stone wall!’ 

Words that were intended to act as a sledge hammer and break down the afore-mentioned metaphor. But of course, not a single crack had appeared.

At least not on the surface. 

_Poor Patrick._

It wasn’t his fault. How could he have known that this is just what she always does? She comes across some junkie conceptual artist, or an up-and-coming rock star with a chip the size of Mount Everest on his shoulder, or a drama student with a trust fund and a clinical depression, and she can’t resist. She sees their broken wings, the little lost boy’s eyes all her romantic partners -both male and female- share, and for a while, she takes them in and shields them, awakening a whole new sense of purpose inside of them until they are completely and utterly smitten with her. Then she pushes them away, in a scene so epic and crushing it feels like the earth is going to split open underneath their feet.

Preferably at the worst possible moment — like last night, for example.

That’s her to a tee. Always adding that smidgeon of drama more to an already catastrophic situation. Always aiming to create the perfect storm.

It hurts her as much as it hurt them. 

Which is exactly the point, of course. She’s trapped, in an endless cycle of self-preservation and self-punishment.

She stubs out the cigarette and looks into her own eyes, their corn blue the only thing about her that has never changed; that seems stead-fast. And for the first time in a long time, she allows herself to think of Tim. The pain singes through her. She lets it burn for a minute or two. Then she walks to the bath tub and opens the tap. She returns to the mirror. On the glass shelf below it, a little white line has already been laid out, carefully sculpted out of what's left over from last night. As the water thunders into the tub, she bends over, and snorts it all in one go. Caring just hurts too much.

*

_Isn’t this your sister?_

Once again, he looks at the text message that Shondra has sent him. At the link included. 

‘Gallery Avant Garde presents _Pandora,_ a series of ground-breaking new works by Lex Murphy. Opening tonight at 8 am.’

He knows about her work, has been following it for years. She paints, mostly abstracts, though she’s done some figurative work, too. Who would have thought? The computer nerd that turned into an artist. It sounds like a bad urban legend. But she has, and the most surprising part is that she's actually really good at it, too. There’s a retro-grunge vibe to everything she creates that’s at the same time unsettling and infinitely familiar. Or maybe the latter is just because to him, she actually _is_ family.

_And so much more than that._

What they shared, very few people on this planet could truly understand. She looked out for him, protected him with her life when both their lives were in danger. Which is why he had been so confused, so ultimately crushed, when she had turned away from him, afterwards. In a way, it had almost been worse than the events in the park. He was having terrible nightmares at the time, in spite of all the therapy and medication, and there was no one, literally no one, to comfort him. His parents were bogged down deep in their divorce proceedings, and Lex was removing herself farther and farther away from the family with each passing day. He could’ve understood why she would have acted that way towards their parents, but why him? It was like she didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, like it hurt her just looking at him. Like he was nothing more than air to her, a ghost, his image, _his impact_ , thinning into nothingness. It hurt him to see how she stopped taking care of herself like she used to, see her take up smoking, for example, among other things. But all he could do was stand by and watch as she exposed herself to dangers that he felt powerless to protect her from.

He had been forced to watch her, the only member of his family that he cared about besides Grandpa, dissipating in front of his eyes.

Since then, all his actions can be brought back to him trying to rebuild that family around him. It explains why he got married at such an early age, when he and Shondra were still in college, and why David got born just two months after she got her degree. The second baby, Joe, followed a year later, and number three is on the way right now. He's glad it turned out that way. He can’t get enough of spending time with them. They ground him, give him purpose and stability. They taught him how comforting it is, to give comfort to others.

He finds a lot of that in his work, teaching biology at a middle school, too. The dinosaurs have never left him, he’s still passionate about them, but only as a hobby. With his name, he could’ve gotten tenure anywhere if he’d chosen to follow that path. But these days, studying dinosaurs requires a level of field work he isn’t prepared to take on. No way is he putting himself in that kind of position again…

He stares at the announcement for Lex’s exhibit.

And he feels it pull. All the beasts from his past. They’re still there. They’ll always be there. 

Lex wasn’t present for his marriage. Nor for the birth of his kids, either. She severed all ties with the family a long time ago - save the financial one, of course - as if she could distance herself from her past that way. She tried to find her comfort in other things. Art, sex, drugs. But he understands. Finally, he understands.

After all, if anyone should be able to, it’s him.

*

The adrenalin ebbs out of her when the last of the guests say their goodbyes. Mary leaves, too. She knows her top artist always likes to hang back at the gallery for a while, after opening night.

Lex walks through the exhibition room, winds her way through her very own creations with a slender glass of champagne loosely in one hand. Never before has she made a collection that’s so deeply personal. As her eyes slide over the works, she relives the emotions she experienced while painting them, her love for art seeping through every pore of her body. It's the only thing that has held her together through the years. She liked computers, once, because they're logical, simple, in a way, but she loves art because it's just the opposite; complex, limitless, chaotic. From the moment she first splattered all her emotions onto a canvas, she knew she had discovered a way to express herself that would keep her from going crazy. She's pleased with this collection. They’re all abstracts, in blood and wine reds, harsh whites and staggering blacks that seem to suck you in. Depictions of sounds, jarring. Of feelings, primordial and instinctive. She has called up the beasts from the shadows of her past, and made them step into the bright, blinding kitchen lights in all their horrible glory. Has allowed them to come and hunt her, one last time. 

The critics gobbled it up. A triumph, Mary whispered excitedly in her ear. Every single work was sold.

They asked about the dinosaurs of course. They always did. In this case, what her feelings were about the new park that was going to be opened soon. 

‘Technology is like a wild beast,’ she had casually answered. ‘I find that once it’s out of its cage, it’s kind of hard to put it back in.’

She stops at the last canvas, the biggest one, the centerpiece of the exhibit. It’s lit both from above and from the sides, giving the whole a mesmerizing quality. Only depths of black, here. No other colors have been used. With the glass of champagne in her hand, she stands and stares at it, forces herself to surrender to its vertigo-inducing abyss. And a loneliness too big to be washed away by any amount of liquor, or coke, or lovers, washes over her.

 _‘Pandora’s throat.’_ A voice reads up. ‘Interesting title.’

She turns to the right and sees him standing beside her, like he’s appeared out of thin air.

‘Tim…’ It’s a sigh, an exhale, a breath held for years and years.

‘Lex.’

They stand there for a while, side by side, eyes fixed on the painting again. She feels awkward. Unsteady. Not at all like herself.

‘You know,’ she admits, with a scoff. ‘After all this time, I’m still afraid of being swallowed by her.’ 

A slight smile curls the right corner of his mouth. ‘Yeah,’ he says, his eyes still on the painting. ‘At night, when the party’s over, it’s just us and her, isn’t it. You and me, staring into the throat of the T-rex.’

Suddenly, his presence is like a glove she slips into, and when he puts his arm around her, she lets him. ‘But you know,’ he whispers, pressing a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Really, it's _us_ that have swallowed _her_. She's what we fear, what we've been running from, but she's become part of us. She's inside of us. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing.’ They look into each other’s eyes and he says: ‘We’re still _here,_ Lex. We’re still standing, you and I. We're fierce, sis.’

She breaks, then. ‘Oh, Tim. I’m so sorry,' she whispers. 'For everything. But it was just too scary. The idea of losing you... I couldn't handle it. I simply loved you… _too much.’_

‘I understand,’ he whispers, and for the first time in a long time, she feels safe again.

It wasn’t a lover’s embrace she needed after all, but simply that of a brother.

‘I’m gonna be a dad again,’ he announces. ‘A girl, this time. She’s going to need a godmother. What do you say? Wanna be the cool aunt?’

She looks up at him, and smiles.


End file.
